Trapped in the Migration Lens: The Misguided Approach to the Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking

East Tower 

This paper addresses the question of how the anti-trafficking protection regime in Europe perpetuates the legacy of racialised exclusion inherent in the doctrine of sovereign migration control. Through a critical analysis of key instruments, including the Palermo Protocol, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT), and the principle of non-refoulement, I argue that these mechanisms, while ostensibly protective, continue to carry forward the remnants of racial sovereignty, with border control and exclusion at their core. To enhance the protection of trafficking victims, the anti-trafficking scholarship must decouple itself from a regime inherently tied to this current migration paradigm. Since the seminal judgment in Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, the trafficking victim protection scholarship has made significant recourse to human rights law to close state accountability gaps and operationalised the tapestry of states' positive obligations to protect victims. While this shift has resulted in important advances – particularly through the repurposing of migration-related frameworks such as refugee law and the customary international law principle of non-refoulement – it has also reinforced a problematic categorisation of trafficking victims as migrants. In some instances, this alignment has led to their mischaracterisation as 'illegal migrants.'
Critical migration scholars have long recognised that the sovereign right of states to control entry is rooted in a legacy of racial exclusion that continues to shape the international migration regime. Despite this reality, human trafficking scholarship has persisted in seeking solutions within the migration paradigm, largely ignoring the racialised impact of sovereign migration control. A radical reimagining is required – one that re-centres victim protection outside the constraints of migration law and challenges the racialised doctrines embedded within sovereign migration control